(no subject)

[skygiants]

I watched some of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries when it was coming out -- I think the 1920s costumes and Intense Eye Contact propelled me about a season and a half into it before I ran face-first into my procedural television block, which is farther than I get into most procedurals tbh.

Then quite recently a cdrama adaptation came out, Miss S, that went up on HBO last year, and tenillypo (who had seen and loved all of Miss Fisher previously) wanted to add it to our list. So now we've watched all of that -- and then genarti, who had never seen any of the original Australian Miss Fisher, wanted to watch some for compare/contrast, which turned into watching the whole series for compare/contrast plus the movie, which we finished up last night. So for this brief moment in time we are now experts in the Miss Fisher Experience!

To be honest, I was not expecting the degree to which Miss S was a near-exact replica of Miss Fisher; I was expecting a similar setup (Independently Wealthy 1920s Style Icon Fights Crime While Engaging In Intense Eye Contact With Local Hot Policeman) and a bunch of different side characters and murder cases, but in fact all of the cases are direct equivalents of Miss Fisher episodes run through localization. This makes for some fascinating and sometimes very funny choices! My personal favorite is that the moderately racist plotline about Miss Fisher's Chinese Boyfriend, His Silk Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride has transformed in Miss S into an identical plotline about Miss S's Russian Boyfriend, His Linen Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride -- I imagine the writing team cackling to themselves when they made that decision -- but I also love every time the original is like 'ello ello zis mystery revolves around zese Bohemian painters ... zey have traveled all the way here from la France .....' and Miss S is like "yeah we had a very intense Bohemian painting scene in 1920s Hangzhou? these Bohemian painters are from Hangzhou."

Obviously the impacts of censorship on the adaptation are pretty notable; Miss S Can flirt widely but Cannot sleep around, and Miss Fisher's butch lesbian doctor friend is young and explicitly straight in her Miss S incarnation despite her dashing pantsuits. None of this was particularly unexpected (they did manage to keep one sympathetic gay couple who feature in one of the early mysteries, which honestly surprised me) but we were taken aback by the changes in the storyline regarding the plucky orphan adopted by both Miss Fisher and Miss S. In the original Miss Fisher episode, Miss Fisher's adopted daughter Jane's mother turns out to be alive, but deeply unstable; Miss Fisher promises to find Jane's mother a sanatorium where she can recover and where Jane can visit occasionally. In the Miss S storyline, Miss S's adopted daughter Su Yun's mother turns out to be alive, but deeply unstable in exactly the same ways as Jane's mother; Miss S sadly tells Su Yun that her real mother needs her and Miss S can't keep her from her, but Su Yun can come back and visit Miss S any time!

Also, Miss S' near-instant cahootship with her love interest and their seamless slide over the course of 34 episodes towards "oh yeah we're more or less engaged" without needing to discuss it is incredibly cute, but definitely a different and IMO less rich flavor than Miss Fisher and her love interest's three-season slow burn around their drastic lifestyle incompatibilities and mutual understanding of how extremely badly they could hurt each other if they got it wrong.

On the other hand, all of Miss S' murder mysteries get two full episodes each to play themselves out compared to the brisk hour Miss Fisher has to get in, solve her murder, and get out, which I think is usually for the better. Characters-of-the-week in Miss Fisher simply don't have time to have any actual emotions about the things that are happening to them, which is unfortunate because those things are so often wild. The average Miss Fisher episode features a small business with 4-5 employees; by the end of any given episode, 2-3 of those employees will be dead, 1-2 more will have been arrested, and Miss Fisher will pat the shellshocked survivor on the shoulder and assure them that they shouldn't give up on their dreams! What happens next? That is Not Miss Fisher's Problem. This becomes particularly glaring any time we get a Sympathetic Murderer, they confess to their crime of murder in the name of self-defense or protecting their child or whatnot and are led away, and in the next scene Miss Fisher and her police boyfriend are toasting each other to another job well done. Sometimes I do think that Peter Wimsey and his fits of guilt over the ethics of crime-fighting have ruined me for all other fictional detectives. Anyway, if I owned a small Australian business, I would simply ban her from the precipices.

Miss S caps itself off with the plot that concludes Miss Fisher's first season, but throws in a lot more dramatic Lost Tomb-style bells and whistles (rewatching the Miss Fisher season finale felt deeply anticlimactic in contrast tbh). I'm rather sorry that it never got around to Miss Fisher's Season Two ACAB plot about corruption in the police force, but I don't mourn Miss Fisher's Season Three arc-plot rehabilitating her deadbeat dad, nor the Miss Fisher movie, which was ... not good .... I was going to say more about how it was not good but this post is already very long and I'm quite sleepy, so if anyone particularly cares I can wax longer in a comment tomorrow!

Comments

[starlady]

Miss S sounds good but I really need to finish watching Miss Fisher.

[skygiants]

I am definitely glad to have seen all of it now!

[sovay]

every time the original is like 'ello ello zis mystery revolves around zese Bohemian painters ... zey have traveled all the way here from la France .....' and Miss S is like "yeah we had a very intense Bohemian painting scene in 1920s Hangzhou? these Bohemian painters are from Hangzhou."

I do admire that.

Sometimes I do think that Peter Wimsey and his fits of guilt over the ethics of crime-fighting have ruined me for all other fictional detectives.

Actually, if I think about it, same.

Anyway, if I owned a small Australian business, I would simply ban her from the precipices.

If this is a typo, don't change a thing.

[skygiants]

It was really fun doing Miss S ---> Miss Fisher in that particular order, too, because we'd be watching a Miss S episode featuring (for ex.) a Glamorous Model From Hong Kong and immediately start placing bets on where the Glamorous Model would turn out to be from in the Miss Fisher episode. (it was, once again, la France)

Every time another fictional detective solves their case I'm like "and you're not thinking at all about what's going to happen to this person after you cracked the logic puzzle? NO sense of personal responsibility? not even a little??"

(it was indeed a typo but I'm not going to >.>)

[mellific]

[hasn't watched either of these two medias voice] man cdramas are so so in love with the "ah your shitty abusive parent is widely acknowledged to be shitty and abusive which is a real bummer, but obviously as a Good Child you will Stay. after all you only get one [mother/father/whatever]!" i guess "evil mother-in-law makes daughter-in-law's life miserable, daughter is unflinchingly filial and [dies or the mil is shamed & changes her ways]" is a chinese media staple but good god

also lkdsjf i love that unraveller is gur bccbfvgr bs guvf va er cebprqhenyf. snagnfgvp yvggyr frg bs rcvfbqvp zlfgrevrf va n obbx nobhg jul gur pbaprcg bs rcvfbqvp zlfgrevrf fhpxf

[lirazel]

What's interesting to me is that I feel like a lot of Kdramas used to be the same about "yeah, your parent is terrible, but obviously you've just got to suffer that!" but recently (I'm thinking of Beyond Evil and even It's Okay Not to Be Okay in particular) they've acknowledged that...sometimes your parent is terrible and you owe them nothing!

Which I can't see happening in a Chinese context because of the extreme censorship. Anyone breaking ties with their parents would be way too Antisocial for them.

[mellific]

ooooh yeah really interesting to see a kdrama shift!! the closest i can think of in a cdrama is Go Ahead where i felt they landed on "kids don't owe parents anything!" pretty firmly but "breaking ties with your parents" just wasn't.... in the universe. not a thought that ANY character at ANY point even brushed elbows with

[skygiants]

it is such a STARK case study in how wedded the industry is to this particular trope, like the beats are identical across both versions which means that it's extremely shot and framed to be like "this situation is Not Safe for a child" until it hits the takeaway at the end and then it's like "well, obviously, the only morally correct choice here was --"

(real whiplash effect from the last cdrama we watched, Love Like the Galaxy, in which the heroine walks out on her mom and the hero fully murders his dad and the show is like "wow, you're both so right and sexy to do that")

:SLDKFJS:LF YOU'RE SO RIGHT. RVGURE lbh gnxr batbvat erfcbafvovyvgl BE lbh trg fghpx va na raqyrff ercrngvat plpyr bs ubeevoyr yvggyr cebprqhenyf --

[genarti]

Love Like The Galaxy spoilers, though: gurl qb gnxr terng pner gb znxr vg pyrne gung uvf qnq vfa'g NPGHNYYL uvf qnq naq ur xabjf vg, gubhtu. Yvxr, ur fhcre qbrf, ohg vg'f rkcyvpvgyl eriratr sbe uvf npghny sngure.

[mellific]

omg this makes me really want to watch love like the galaxy. it IS sexy!!!! the show is right!!!!!

[skygiants]

to be fair Beth is right v sbetbg gung gurl riraghnyyl erirny gur thl ur'f fcrag gur jubyr fubj cynaavat gb zheqre vfa'g grpuavpnyyl uvf erny qnq fswx;qnqswqfx;y OHG V FGVYY GUVAX VG PBHAGF. VA IVORF

[genarti]

OMG YOU'RE SO RIGHT about Unraveller,though!

[blotthis]

IM AN IDIOT AND FORGOT I LITERALLY HAVE THIS BOOK IN MY ROOM well now i know one (1) thing

[mellific]

BLOT THIS ONE IS SUCH A GOOD TIME..... s-tier hardinge imo

[anekdot]

Miss S's Russian Boyfriend, His Linen Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride

DOFKHDOKHDF.

Also I am disappointed but perhaps also a little relieved they were not able to replicate the deranged intensity of Whatever The Hell Is Happening with Austrialian Phyrne and Jack, because two instances of that existing in the universe might be too much.

[skygiants]

god, yeah, Australian Phryne and Jack have such a POWERFUL & unique brand of Whatever The Hell Is Going On With Them .... and tbh I am not sure it is even possible to land it with that degree of intensity without Phryne banging a guest star of the week every other episode, it's such an effective way to hyper-charge all the ways in which Phryne and Jack are Not Doing That and yet being more wildly intense about three seconds of eye contact than the three minutes of horizontal tango with whatever rando happens later in the episode.

[osprey_archer]

Oh wow! I'm fascinated that the cdrama adaptation is SO similar. Yeah, I can see the advantage of having two episodes per mystery so the side characters get a little space to react to "my boss is now dead! my boss's second-in-command is the murderer! I am now unemployed and deeply traumatized..." or whatever else has gone down in Small Business Murder that week.

I would be interested in your thoughts about the Miss Fisher movie! ...I have forgotten most of what happens in the Miss Fisher movie except that at the end Miss Fisher gets Jack in her tent by pretending to be frightened by a (snake? spider?). She pretends to be dead for a while? Jack has to go investigate and realizes she's alive and is Big Mad about the faked death and it's never fully dealt with?

[skygiants]

The episodes are different lengths (40-45 minutes for Miss S, an hour for Miss Fisher), so it works out to about twenty minutes more of total storytelling time per mystery, which is just enough time to give a character of the week a bit more depth OR to build more absurd pit traps into your murderer's secret tomb, depending on what your plot is this week. And both do help the overall narrative, I think!

okay so the things that do not work about the Miss Fisher movie:

- just a complete and total embrace of ye olde White People Have Exotic Adventures In the Desert mode
- none of the regular cast is there except Jack (and her aunt for a bit), which is slightly awkward given that the plot kicks off with Alas, Phryne Is Dead And Here's Her Memorial Service and it's being hosted by some episode-of-the-week randos with neither her parents nor her adopted daughter present
- Miss Fisher's just-for-the-movie sidekick gets nothing to do except be a plot device
- the Jack-and-Phryne dynamic of the film is built around Bickering over Misunderstandings (she didn't pretend to be dead on purpose but she Did lavender marry a maharajah and Jack is Very peeved about it) which is intended to get them to the point of full romantic reconciliation but given that their dynamic in the show is so much an intense & unusual slow-burn about the way in which they do understand each other, collapsing back into a much more generic-feeling Bickering Sexual Tension feels very unsatisfying! to me! even if he does have to rescue her from quicksand, shirtless!

the things that do work about the Miss Fisher movie:
- okay these are mostly actually just things I think are very funny about the Miss Fisher movie
- this isn't actually a 'thing that works' I just think it's SO funny when they're all hanging out IN A TOMB for the big finale and suddenly THE MURDERER IS AMONG US NOW. how did he get here?? from England??? WHO could say that's NOT the point
- Alexander The Great's Mummified Bride, Preserved In Honey is also a very very funny plot device
- real shout outs to Jack's actor who's doing some truly incredible face acting during the Miss Fisher's Fake Funeral scene, that one absolutely did hit

[osprey_archer]

Oh gosh, I can't believe that one of the things I forgot about this movie was Alexander The Great's Mummified Bride, Preserved in Honey. Truly how could that slip my mind!

And yes, I was so annoyed that none of the regular cast showed up! Why do movie sequels to TV shows so often do this? Surely they understand that the reason we want to see the movie is to revisit all our old TV show friends! What is Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries without Dottie and Mac and Bert and Cec?

[troisoiseaux]

Oooh, the similarities/differences are so interesting??

[skygiants]

honestly I really strongly recommend the experience if you have ... uh .... approximately 70 hours of television watching you wish to fill (or, in our case, a standing semi-weekly TV date with a friend who lives round the corner from you)

[lannamichaels]

I had no idea there was a cdrama version! Kind of tempted now, I loved Miss Fisher, although I didn't like a lot of the third season decisions. Is there a version of Dot? How is she handled?

[skygiants]

Yeah, Miss S has a Dottie and she's a delight! Her name is Taozi and she's given exactly the same plot beats, arc and romance as Dottie except every time someone would say 'Catholic' in Miss Fisher they instead substitute 'Buddhist' for Taozi. I personally would not have necessarily expected that all the plot beats that arise out of Dottie's Catholicism would arise in exactly the same way from Taozi's Buddhism but I am sure the Miss S adaptation team knows better than I!

[chestnut_pod]

That is SO funny, oh my.

[musesfool]

Oh interesting that the Chinese version so closely follows the original show, though the change to Jane's story are unfortunate. Are the clothes as glorious? Does Dot get the same excellent growth?

[skygiants]

The clothes are definitely fantastic -- they're clearly working off a slightly smaller budget, so you see more repeats in Miss S's wardrobe, but that just means we greeted outfits we particularly liked as old friends. (here's a gifset featuring a couple representative ones)

Dot | Taozi's arc is EXACTLY the same (though she is a Devout Buddhist instead of a Devout Catholic) but the actress brings a very different energy to it -- she's this very tiny woman who looks and is styled very young when she first appears, and it's really fun to watch the way her confidence and style evolve across the course of the show.

[musesfool]

Thanks for the link to the gif set - the clothes really are great!

[castiron]

This sounds very fun!

I read the books first, so I deal with the TV Phryne/Jack relationship by assuming that this is an entirely different group of people that just happen to have the same names as the book characters.

[skygiants]

yeah, I was about to start this post like "I'm temporarily an expert on Miss Fisher!" and then remembered I've read none of the books. I am not an expert on Miss Fisher. But I am temporarily an expert on these two versions of Miss Fisher!

[brownbetty]

Somehow it did not occur to me from your description ("near exact replica") that this would be set in Republican Era. I don't really have room in my life for another drama, but I'm tempted for for the ~Aesthetic~

[skygiants]

I am not going to lie, the ~aesthetic~ is incredible (and it's only 34 episodes! a mere drop in the bucket!)

[davidgillon]

the moderately racist plotline about Miss Fisher's Chinese Boyfriend, His Silk Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride

Is my memory playing me false, or wasn't there also an opium den in there, for the complete racist cliche trifecta?

[lizbee]

I believe there was! And for an EXTRA helping of racism, in the books, the Chinese Boyfriend was Phryne's long-term love interest and she effectively became his mistress, but in the TV series he was one-and-done.

(Which was probably for the sake of the Phryne/Jack thing they were building, but it came at a time when MULTIPLE ABC adaptations were erasing interracial romances between white women and Chinese men, so it jumped out at me.)

(For the record, the books are far more racist than the TV series and also just generally badly written.)

[skygiants]

Technically he was two-and-done (he's introduced in the opera case and then gets a case of his own next episode) but yeah, He Does Not Linger, Miss Fisher (and Miss S) are both like "WELL it seems like you and your communist fiancee are perfect for each other after all! and either way she apparently doesn't have another job and I've apparently hit my limit on hiring new side characters of the week to work in my household so ... yeah ....."

[vass]

In the books, he gets kidnapped by pirates, she rescues him, and his grandma (who is a stereotypical Dragon Lady but not evil) in gratitude for this agrees that Phryne can be Lin Chung's concubine and she (grandma) will arrange a marriage with a wife who will not object to this relationship, on condition that Phryne doesn't object to or interfere with the marriage.

[skygiants]

His evil grandma and evil cousins are involved in opium smuggling! I don't remember whether the same is true for the Russian boyfriend or if it's a different kind of smuggling but he definitely has an equally evil grandma.

[lirazel]

Interesting! I really enjoyed Miss Fisher but never watched the movie because I heard it wasn't good. I love hearing about how the Chinese version is the same and different!

[skygiants]

I personally am glad to have seen the movie to Complete the Miss Fisher Experience, but yeah, I do not know that it's really necessary .... would by contrast definitely recommend that Miss Fisher fans watch Miss S, if you have the time to spare and will not be bored by seeing almost all of the same plot points play over again.

[vass]

the moderately racist plotline about Miss Fisher's Chinese Boyfriend, His Silk Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride

!!! I haven't watched the show because I read the books at an early enough age that the changes the show made would have just bugged me too much (among other things, Jack Robinson is happily married and has no sexual tension with Phryne at all), so I didn't know they made the bride communist! In the original moderately racist plotline in the books, the problem isn't that she's a communist, it's that she has a Dark Secret[*] and is acting squirrelly because of it, and also that Mr Butler is paranoid about having to give evidence in a divorce court, so he gives notice now Phryne's dating a married man.[**]

[* The Dark Secret is that the woman Lin Chung was engaged to died. The family didn't want to break off the engagement, so they sent her older cousin who'd just been widowed. She is accordingly Not A Virgin. Phryne is able to assure her that this will not be a problem for Lin Chung.]

[** Phryne hires a new butler and asks Mr Butler to spend his notice period training him. The new butler tells so many horror stories about worse employers than Phryne, that Mr Butler changes his mind and withdraws his notice, very much to Phryne's and Mrs Butler's relief.]

In the original Miss Fisher episode, Miss Fisher's adopted daughter Jane's mother turns out to be alive, but deeply unstable; Miss Fisher promises to find Jane's mother a sanatorium where she can recover and where Jane can visit occasionally.

They what? (In the books, Phryne has two adoptive daughters, Jane and Ruth. I knew they'd compressed that into one daughter in the TV series, but I didn't know this part. I can't remember what the deal with Jane's parents was -- orphan, I think -- but Ruth's mother's in a sanatorium because she's dying of tuberculosis.)

What happens next? That is Not Miss Fisher's Problem.

In the books, she ends up either adopting or employing a LOT of people.

There also is at least one book that deals with the fact that the killer's going to be executed for it. I wouldn't say it handles it well, but she does arrange to fulfill the condemned man's last request, which is something deeply horrible.

Anyway, if I owned a small Australian business, I would simply ban her from the precipices.

She tips lavishly and also brings them a lot of business in a time when they needed it. I guess at least some people would have wanted to risk it.

Miss Fisher's Season Three arc-plot rehabilitating her deadbeat dad

...That definitely didn't happen in the books. She has to interact with her deadbeat dad in one book, but he just wants her to do him a favour and accompany a disfigured veteran back to Orkney, which she does for the soldier's sake, not her dad's. (She finds a body there, because of course she does.)

[skygiants]

The Not A Virgin secret is also true for the show's bride, but the extra twist is that her dead husband was an ardent Communist rebel and so is she, which is why her family had to ship her away for a hasty marriage to hide her from the government! She is also a dab hand with a pistol and helps fight Lin Chung's evil opium-smuggling cousins.

(I am very sad the show doesn't have a Mrs Butler.)

Yeah, Jane is originally presented/presenting as a plucky street urchin who's run away from a thieves' gang, but several episodes later a woman starts lurking around Miss Fisher's house with big sad eyes and it turns out this is her mother who's just been discharged from hospital, who is very nice and loves her daughter very much but also is tuberculitic and has unfortunate bouts of paranoia and and a tendency to almost let the house burn down in the middle of the night.

TV show Miss Fisher ends up adopting or employing a bunch of people in the first three episodes until they fill up the cast roster, at which point they start needing to find other solutions for problems that clearly would have been solved by her adopting or employing somebody if the show had Infinite Budget for Supporting Actors. A lot of people move temporarily into her house for the course of an episode and conveniently find somewhere else to be or something else to do by the time the hour wraps up, and I think a couple of them get kicked over to be on Aunt Prudence's Staff so we can be assured that they're doing okay but won't see them around ...

The season three arc-plot is all about Miss Fisher's Deadbeat Dad lurking around Australia and refusing to go home and stealing her money and acting generally shady while a mysterious man accuses him of dark secrets and murders people in his vicinity, and in the final episode it turns out the mysterious man is his shellshocked cousin and Miss Fisher's Deadbeat Dad Did Nothing Wrong. Profoundly unsatisfying tbh!

[vass]

The book bride, Camellia, doesn't shoot and is pretty meek generally, but she gardens (Jack Robinson ends up in conversation with her and is very relieved she a) can speak English, and b) has such sensible views on rhododendrons) and can talk Chinese literature with Lin Chung, which Phryne can't.

Mrs Butler is great.

it turns out the mysterious man is his shellshocked cousin and Miss Fisher's Deadbeat Dad Did Nothing Wrong.

Ugh. Whatever one might say about the books, they are typically better than that about PTSD.

[vass]

Oh, and Jane was going to be trafficked by an evil hypnotist, and the woman providing him with children for this was also keeping Ruth as a kitchen lackey. Phryne finds Jane as an amnesiac on the train to Ballarat, and after Jane gets her memory back she insists that if Phryne's going to adopt her she should take Ruth too. Ruth apprentices herself to Mrs Butler as a future cook, and likes romance novels. Jane is a classic absent-minded genius and wants to be a doctor.

(These books were a fixture of my adolescence.)

[alias_sqbr]

As an Australian who watched and overall enjoyed the TV series of Miss Fisher (I avoided the movie) but was constantly uncomfortable with the very Australian exotification and racism (specifically of Chinese people!) I think I need to track this down just to compare.

I watched the first season with someone in Argentina of Italian and Jewish descent which kinda felt like introducing a friend to wildly offensive relatives and having the terrible attitudes you grew up around being thrown into stark relief.

[skygiants]

It is so interesting to compare/contrast, there are fully essays to be written about the ways the small differences play out!

(lololol I remember finding the Jewish Episode of Miss Fisher so funny the first time I watched it and it was again very funny to me this time. This little-known romantic poem Raisins and Almonds, only the Yiddish-language chart-topper of the early 20th century!)

[chestnut_pod]

Miss S's Russian Boyfriend, His Linen Import Business, And His Communist Arranged Marriage Bride -- snerk; this is wonderful.

I am very glad this exists, lol; I really do think my favorite species of adaptation is "exactly the same, but different locale and fashion," which ballet and theater are usually good for, less so TV. So maybe some Miss S is in my future!

[skygiants]

Miss S really is perfect for this -- almost exactly the same, but with enough tiny little differences that you can really go to town on overanalysis of relatively small changes (now that you mention it, this is a mode of theater viewing & discussion I really enjoy also, see: any time I've ever seen a Shakespeare.)

[portico]

It is so funny to me that you watched these in reverse order from me--and watched them both! I tried Miss S after seeing all of Miss Fisher and bounced hard off of the identicalness of the two things. And in my case, the costumes and eye contact were not enough to see me through, haha.

I will say, also, as someone who set up their first ever google alert for any post-season 3 news, that while the movie is objectively Not Good, we were just. so desperate. We were so so desperate.

[skygiants]

Honestly it was extra funny watching all of Miss Fisher afterwards because even though we had just seen every case not more than a month previously, our friend T could still never remember how the mystery was going to resolve while I'd get two minutes in and be like "oh, this is the one with the evil beauty pageant director!"

(It was also very funny having just enough Pop History Period Knowledge to sometimes be able to predict what salacious/dramatic bit of historical detail a case was going to unravel around; I think I'm proudest of the one where they showed us a shiny watch and I was like 'OH, I bet that guy's dead wife was a radium girl and he's doing an absurdly convoluted murder for revenge!' And Indeed, Twenty Minutes Later, He Was.)

I TRULY DO UNDERSTAND THIS.